


Sunken Labyrinth

by lovi



Series: Sunken Labyrinth/Risen Steeple [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreams vs. Reality, Dreamscapes, Drowning, First Love, I'll add more tags as I continue with this, Internalized Homophobia, Intimacy, Love, Mentions of Death, Multi, Nightmares, Psychological Trauma, Self-Reflection, Touch Aversion, intense depictions of dream experiences
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:46:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27463645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovi/pseuds/lovi
Summary: Several dreams in which Sakusa Kiyoomi drowns.
Relationships: Komori Motoya & Sakusa Kiyoomi, Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi, Sakusa Kiyoomi/Ushijima Wakatoshi
Series: Sunken Labyrinth/Risen Steeple [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2006608
Kudos: 18





	Sunken Labyrinth

**Author's Note:**

> just a little warning!!!
> 
> this is Sakusa's section!!! in almost every chapter, drowning is hinted at as being the conclusion of the chapter's dream. this story is not about character death but rather the actual content of the dream itself: I just chose the standard dream tropes of drowning/flying & falling as ways to further depict the lens of sakuatsu's world-viewing goggles. each chapter will end with a description of them awake and fully healthy.
> 
> thank you for deciding to tag along!!! I am trying to be heavy-handed with my tagging so pleaaaaaase let me know if I missed anything that stuck out to you. the chapters will get more intense as the series goes on.
> 
> enjoy the ride!! (or enjoy ENOUGH......)

Kiyoomi stumbled into their small closet of a bathroom, tripping lightly over the bunched-up bathmat as his mother closed the door behind him. He was finally tall enough to peek into the mirror hung loosely above the sink, tiny pebbles darting just along its bottom edge, soaking in the wonder of his own reflection.

_Doctor’s orders,_ she had said. Static buzz saturated otherwise quiet space, and Kiyoomi felt at ease. Window was shut; hair tousled by a slender hand adorned with well-groomed nails and calloused only at the fingertips. _Just fifteen minutes._ Door was shut. Kiyoomi sat on the toilet lid; cold porcelain at the edge of his summer shorts making him flinch, toes just barely skimming the rippled folds of the bathmat beneath him. He slid down and scooted forward, smoothing out its wrinkles with his bare feet. Waited patiently with nothing much to do other than swing his legs back and forth, quietly pick at his hanging cuticles. 

Then the steam would start, the air would thicken. It would fill his nose with the thick scent of dampened cardboard, and enter his airways like a soppy paper towel. It felt comfortable til it didn’t, nice til it was mean; mean as in annoying, pestering. _Clingy,_ Kiyoomi thought as it stuck to his arms, each droplet weighing heavy on skin he was now hyper-aware of. _Maybe this is when it began,_ he pondered, making sure his thoughts weren't too loud as he took shallower breaths, trying to avoid the feeling of the heavy steam entering his lungs, as though gasping deep within aerated cotton. _Despising the unwanted guest._ His heart began to rise in his throat, the weight of his consciousness became somewhat unbearable; thoughts multiplied like each little droplet of water hanging on the air, and Kiyoomi was standing up. He was leaping to his feet and shutting off the tap, gazing quickly at his reflection in the mirror and seeing nothing but some fogged resemblance, both frustratingly distant and far too close. He vowed to never take a hot shower again. There was a knock on the bathroom door and he wanted nothing more than to sink into his mother’s warm arms, to hear her voice, petal-soft whispering that everything was going to be okay. 

But it was different, room temperature nearing cool: his little cousin, ten and three quarters, standing snot-nosed in the hall. Kiyoomi looked above him, around him, trying to catch a glimpse of his mother’s blackberry hair yet unable to hone his line of focus; he was drawn back to his cousin, whose mouth was running messily at a mile a minute. Kiyoomi’s hands shook and he felt for a moment like he was back in those hallways, shoulders brushing up against his own, hands grabbing the railing, grazing the metal doorknobs. Back at his cousin’s house: forced in front of the television, cartridge shoved sloppily into the console. And Komori was wiping his nose on the back of his hand while they played videogames, and Kiyoomi was looking down at his own grubby controller. Wondering how much snot was embedded deep within the slim cracks surrounding each button. 

His running mind drifted from the calming back of his mother into the uneasy solitude of being stranded amidst a sea of phenomena; a spectacle caught in an endless current of sensation, droplets of water that made his pores itch. His mind slid into the small space of wondering, pressed deep into his chest pocket: touching a railing and wondering just how many others had; wondering what else they had touched throughout the day, wondering if those things they handled had been touched by anyone else. It felt as though he were intricately and perpetually connected with everyone and everything around him and it was all far too intimate—like a thousand _others_ running their grubby fingers over him, wiping their noses on the backs of his hands: he felt one grab at his ankle— 

He shut the door. He can’t remember exactly when it happened, when the quiet space shoved between white walls became a place of emotional comfort rather than emotional exhaustion. When his shaky hands left his sides and began rummaging through the cabinet beneath the sink, digging for the white cloth, hooking it around his ears: his only barrier, the soothing fence between him and the rest of the “other”. He gazed in the mirror, its bottom edge hitting the gentle curve of his chest, mildly concave. 

_Why is it that I shrink as I grow? Why am I unable to grow with time like those around me, why must I shrink back to make room for the other rather than give myself the space I need to grow?_ And there was the bathtub, seated gentle like a safety blanket, folded neat against the side wall; kind with its curtains, its gentle barrier against the heavy weight of paraphernalia. He clambered into its basin, clothes and all, bare feet against cold porcelain; sat down and tucked his knees in as he drew the shower curtain shut, held taut by a shaky hand. 

It all felt like far too much, he wanted to rid himself of the sensations: the feeling of legs growing too big for the bathtub, knee bones awkwardly bumping into eachother when he leaned back too far. His snot-nosed cousin, now tall and _grown,_ who stood knocking relentlessly on the other side of the door. _Why did he grow but I shrank?_ The thought graced his mind like a light comet as he stretched out his legs, no longer able to expand them taut within the small confines of his bathtub. The one person he had desired to touch more than anything, who looked like musk and rich cologne but smelled like baby lotion and black peppercorn: how he wished to run his palms soft along the smooth skin of his forearms, look into his eyes and _see how that made him feel._ Being touched by him. 

The day he finally did. The way his fingertips burned white-hot on the brink of the flesh, the way the sensation lingered on his skin like some twisted, grim memento of the unattainable, the searing residue of something _illegal._ His eyes closed and his skin ached at the thought, muscles tensing and quaking. The one thing, the one person. He couldn’t have this _one thing for himself._ And his mother’s warm voice was in his ear but she was nowhere to be found; just the reside of long nails digging lovingly into the flesh of his shoulder. 

_“Boiling water kills all impurities.”_

His hand was already reaching back towards the faucet, twisting the knob til it creaked and jumped into action: the water was hotter than _hell._ He let it fill the tub to the brim, let it spill over onto the bathroom tiles as he sunk down til his chin rested on the water’s surface: soaking til the skin peeled off, til the steam filled his lungs and _chastised_ him; feeling his nerves spike, breaking out in a sweat as the air around him grew thick and hot and heavy. He sunk down beneath the water til his knees sat cold and exposed far above the gentle slope of his nose and forehead, hair swirled around his crown like some ink-toned halo. It all felt like too much, but he _accepted_ it: accepted the close quarters as a necessary step to getting _clean;_ closing the door to the crucible as he burned inside. 

Deep beneath the water, behind the heavy curtain of closed eyelids; Kiyoomi thought he saw himself in multitude, swore he watched as each stage of his child and adult selves swam towards him in earnest. Felt the way his head swam as they chained his ankles to the lake’s bottom, whispered that it was necessary exposure. His lungs _burned,_ the cotton gentle in comparison. 

Kiyoomi woke up gasping for air, bedsheets bunched and caught around his ankles. 


End file.
